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SMT-Oct2016

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90 SMT Magazine • October 2016
by Tony Bellitto
FIRSTRONIC LLC
As with many EMS providers, Firstronic's
team of people is its biggest competitive advan-
tage. The challenge the company has faced is
developing an effective way to recruit and re-
tain high-quality team members in labor mar-
kets where experienced manufacturing talent
is in short supply. A whole new generation of
workforce is now entering manufacturing, and
they're not the same as the past generation, and
that generation is different than the one before
it. This is a fact, and the sooner companies re-
alize this, the sooner they start to become at-
tractive to this new generation and retain those
critical assets. This article looks at the compa-
ny's systems for evaluating, onboarding and re-
taining a high quality workforce in its Grand
Rapids, Michigan and Juarez, Mexico facilities.
The labor market dynamics associated with
the two facilities are different. After more than
a decade of focus on the service economy, the
supply of experienced electronics assembly
workers in Grand Rapids is limited. Conversely,
Juarez has an experienced labor pool, but there
is a high demand for experienced electronics
assembly workers due to the large number of
manufacturing facilities located there. In both
cases, the company's rapid growth has driven
the need to attract, train and retain large num-
bers of employees.
For example, the Grand Rapids facility
nearly doubled its workforce in 2014, adding
110 workers. Most were entry-level workers. A
$300,000 grant from The Right Place Inc., in
collaboration with The Michigan Economic De-
velopment Corp. (MEDC), the City of Grand
Rapids, and a $289,550 Skilled Trades Training
Funds grant from the Michigan's Workforce De-
velopment Agency, was used to offset the costs
of the training required to hire the additional
workers.
The Juarez facility was a greenfield opera-
tion established in the third quarter of 2014.
While a shelter provider with a robust labor re-
cruitment process was utilized for a fast start-
up, internal HR practices play a large role in
minimizing turnover and encouraging word-of-
mouth within the skilled labor pool about the
quality of work environment and available po-
sitions. When the facility was opened in 2014
Recruiting and Maintaining a High-Quality Manufacturing Workforce
ARTICLE